Where You Go, I'll Follow
by EmilyFuckingFitch
Summary: In all of Root's lifetimes, she's found that there are only two things that have always held constant: 1) Root always remembers. 2) Shaw always forgets. Root/Shaw
1. You Were The Sun

"_And I'd choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I'd find you and I'd choose you."_

_- The Chaos of Stars (Kiersten White)_

_/_

In all of Root's lifetimes, she's found that there are only two things that have always held constant:

1) Root always remembers.

2) Shaw always forgets.

/

In her first life, they meet when they're 29. Fixated on tracking The Machine, Root hacks into the ISA database, whittling it down to the list of agents who would know of The Machine's location. In the end, one name remains: Sameen Shaw.

She poses as Veronica and tasers her, threatening to torture her with an iron in order to obtain that information, to expose the secret that Shaw keeps hidden.

/

(Perhaps the one thing that Root will always regret

was not being able to meet Shaw in her first life as herself.

Maybe then, she wouldn't have to wonder how it'd feel

to not live a life loving someone so much,

and for them, not at all.)

/

Most of the time, Root spends her lives wandering. To Rome's coffee shops, England's dog pounds, New York's shooting ranges—places that she'd think Shaw would frequent, hoping that maybe she'll catch glimpses of her. Root always finds dark hair, lithe frames, brown eyes, and cocky smirks, but none of them are quite like hers. None of them make her heart flutter or her chest expand, and none of them make her feel like she can breathe again. Instead, they remind her of the hollow space in her chest and the constant feeling of missing something she can never quite have.

She wanders.

/

One time:

Root jumps out of a four-story building, narrowly escaping a gunshot to the head. She lands on the roof of a car, face down, her left arm breaking her fall. She groans, her head throbbing in pain, and her entire body, sore. She knows before she even tries to stand up that she's broken a few of her bones. There's noise—too much noise. Cars honking. People yelling, screaming. Sirens. And before she can really process it, she's being carried by two men onto a stretcher. Despite her protests, they rush her to the paramedic van, to the nearest hospital. She wants to remove the IV they've stuck in her arm, to push them away and jump out of the van, but against her will, she finds herself closing her eyes instead.

By the time Root opens them again, she's in a room too bright and too pale, wearing a hospital gown a size too big and a cast on her left arm that limits too much of her movement. She wants to close her eyes again.

"Samantha Groves," a stern voice calls, as the hospital screen pulls away.

Root looks up.

It's Shaw.

"I've assessed the damages on your body from the fall. It seems that you've broken your left arm and four of your ribs," Shaw informs her, her eyes on the clipboard that she's holding. "However, there are other wounds on your body that have never properly healed." Shaw looks up from her clipboard. "Would you like those looked at as well?"

Root gives her a grateful smile, but shakes her head.

"Thank you, but no."

Shaw quirks her eyebrow.

"You've got some sort of death wish?"

Root smiles at her again, but this time, it doesn't quite reach her eyes.

"Something like that."

/

"I love you," Shaw breathes as she thrusts inside Root, whispering the words on her skin like a promise she intends to keep.

Root nods, biting her lip to stop the same words from falling out of her mouth. If she doesn't say them aloud, maybe the ache that weighs so heavy on her chest will stop growing, maybe the hollow feeling that siphons air from her lungs will be filled, and maybe, what they have in that moment will last more than just a lifetime.

/

(The worst part of it all is that

Shaw never remembers.)

/

"I love you, Sameen," Root slurs, her eyes staring lazily at Shaw.

Shaw chuckles as she walks towards Root. "All of my patients tell me that," Shaw says to her, checking Root's vitals. "And it's Dr. Shaw to you."

"But you believe me, right, Sam?" Root pushes, her voice more urgent. "That I mean it?"

Shaw gives her a strange look. "Your mind's delirious from the morphine, Ms. Groves," Shaw says matter-of-factly, jotting down notes on her clipboard. "It should wear off in a few hours."

Root shakes her head, her shoulders, deflated.

"It never does."

/

(Or maybe, that Root remembers it all.)

/

It only lasts a second, two at most. Two seconds of reveling in the feel of Shaw's lips on hers, the hot breath against her skin, the roughness of Shaw's hands. And then the pressure on her lips is gone, replaced by a shove on her shoulders, back towards the elevator. Root sees Shaw pull down the metal screen, locking the latch, and all she can do is stare, frozen in place. Her body knows before her mind does of what Shaw's about to do.

Shaw runs towards the override button, leaving Root behind.

/

(No matter how loudly Root screamed,

she couldn't quell the rampant fire that

singed her insides with first degree burns,

and engulfed her with unrelenting pain

from the inside, out.)

/

"How many lives has it been?"

It's late, dark. Even under the light of the moon, Root can barely make out Shaw's hard features. But while the New York summer night stifles the air of the streets in the city, in the confines of their apartment, with Root's head on Shaw's chest and their legs intertwined, Root breathes easily.

"Seventy five," Root whispers, the words hitting softly on Shaw's skin like a secret she's never dared to say aloud.

Shaw hums, runs her hands through Root's hair. For a long moment, they stay like that, and despite the noise of the busy streets outside their window, all Root hears is the slow, steady beat of Shaw's heart and the even breaths that Shaw takes.

"How many do you see me in?"

Root's hands tighten reflexively on Shaw's waist. Not enough, Root thinks. Never enough.

Eventually, she answers.

"Twenty two."

Root feels Shaw stiffen beneath her, and she frowns. She pushes herself up off her elbows to look at Shaw's face, to figure out why Shaw suddenly tensed up. She'd expected anger, or annoyance, or pain, but instead, all Root sees in Shaw's brown eyes is sadness, dark and heavy. She feels Shaw's hands on her face, cradling her cheeks gently, reverently, as though she's afraid that if she doesn't, Root will break.

"Do I ever love you in them?" Shaw asks, her eyes wide with fear, of what Root's answer will be.

Root tries to smile. If Root can help it, she tries not to remember those lives-the lives in which she finds Shaw only to watch her from afar, because of ill-fated timing, of lovers had, of circumstances. Those lives were lives that didn't end quickly enough.

"Sometimes."

At that, Shaw kisses her, not out of pity or of sympathy. Shaw kisses her, soft and insistent like an honest apology, but for what, Root's not sure. She doesn't ask, doesn't want to remember anymore, intent on being here with Shaw and savoring it for as long as she can.

Eventually, Shaw breaks their kiss to come up for air. Breathing heavily, she looks at Root straight in the eye, and asks her one more question:

"Do you ever love me in them?"

Root nods fervently. She leans down and kisses Shaw with all she has, like she doesn't ever want to let Shaw go. Root feels her lips kiss back, feels moisture on her cheeks, and her body relaxing beneath her.

"Always," Root mumbles into the kiss, tastes the salt on her lips. "Always."

/

In all of Root's lifetimes, she's found that there are only three things that have always held constant:

1) Root always remembers.

2) Shaw always forgets.

3) Root will always find her way back to her.


	2. And I Was the Stars

"_I love you forever. I am sorry I cannot love you now."_

– _Angelmaker (Nick Harkaway)_

_/_

"Please, I have a son!" The man in front of her—George Williams—pleads, shaking, cowering on the floor, bleeding profusely from his knee and onto the carpet.

"Have mercy on me, please! I promise I won't do it again."

Shaw scoffs, shoots his other kneecap out of irritation. He yelps and groans, rolling on the carpet in pain. He holds his legs gingerly, tears forming in his eyes, but doesn't dare say anything else.

He'd set off five bombs in two New York malls, killing forty, and wounding more. He'd murdered innocent people who deserved more than just an empty past and a distant future. He took the lives of people who deserved a living present.

He took it away from them.

She looks down at him again, sees him whimpering, holding back choked sobs.

Shaw rolls her eyes.

Does he really think that he deserves any kind of mercy?

Cole glances at her, and even though he knows what she'll say, he still asks, "Should we let him live, Shaw?"

She clenches her jaw tightly, her face, hard. She raises her gun, leveling it to George's head.

"No," Shaw says firmly, and pulls the trigger, the resounding bang echoing the finality of her decision.

Shaw's never believed in second chances. Never saw a purpose for it. The first chance should be enough. To get it right, or not at all. Second chances only make you repeat the same decisions, the same mistakes. It doesn't fix who you are, doesn't change the circumstances, doesn't alter how things will ultimately end.

And those who do believe in second chances?

They're the hopelessly hopeful.

The repeat beginnings.

The tragic endings.

Shaw will never be one of them.

/

It hits her at odd times. Like when she notices a pair of brown eyes at a bar and feels like she could lose herself in them, even when she knows it shouldn't.

Or when she sees a crooked smirk as she walks down the street and feels a sudden emptiness in her chest, as though she's lost something she's never had a chance to keep.

Or when she brings home a one-night stand back to her apartment and they moan her name breathily—not Shaw, but _Sameen_—and she tenses out of reflex, like it sounds foreign to her ears.

Like it belongs to someone else.

It's moments like these that make her think that her body's telling her she's missing something, but she doesn't know _what _and she doesn't remember why and she doesn't know how to get it back.

She downs another glass of scotch.

/

"Update?"

"Patient's name, Samantha Groves. Room 14. She suffers from head trauma and multiple fractures from a four-story fall. Her vitals have been stabilized," the nurse tells Shaw as she hands off the medical chart to her. "We're unsure if she's suicidal, but multiple bullet wounds and faded cuts on her abdomen which weren't sustained from the fall indicates that she is."

"Jesus," Shaw mutters, shaking her head, skimming through Samantha's medical history. "Is she off her meds?"

The nurse shrugs. "I don't know, Dr. Shaw."

Shaw rolls her eyes. "I wasn't asking you." She takes a pen from the front desk and starts walking towards Room 14.

"Samantha Groves," Shaw says firmly, pulling the hospital curtains away. She looks down at her clipboard, flipping through the pages.

"I've assessed the damages on your body from the fall. It seems that you've broken your left arm and four of your ribs. However, there are other wounds on your body that have never properly healed." She looks up from the chart and at Samantha. "Would you like those looked at as well?"

For a long moment, her patient doesn't speak, just stares at her. Stares at Shaw like she's trying to memorize every aspect of her face, her cheekbones, her jawline, her eyes—as though she's been waiting her entire life to see her and hear the sound of her voice and she simply doesn't want to forget.

Shaw scrunches her face in confusion, and almost instantly, the expression on Samantha's face is gone, replaced by an overwhelming dullness in her eyes, a pair of diamonds that have lost their luster.

Samantha eventually gives her a weak smile, and shakes her head.

"Thank you, but no," she croaks.

Shaw wants to scoff at that, though she refrains. Instead, Shaw asks, "You've got some sort of death wish?"

Samantha smiles again, but this time, doesn't try to hide the sadness in her eyes, letting it spread across the rest of her features.

"Something like that," Samantha answers vaguely.

Shaw raises an eyebrow. "Care to explain?"

"It's not like I seek out death, but." Samantha pauses for a moment.

"I don't mind it either. The idea of my life ending," Samantha eventually says, before turning her head towards the window. She takes a deep breath, and exhales. Out of physical exhaustion, Shaw would assume, from all the medication they've given her. But there's something in the way that she's sighing and the way her eyes droop—resigned and heavy—that makes her think that maybe. Maybe that's not the case at all.

"Most of the time it just feels like I'm…waiting."

Shaw hesitates for a moment, takes a step closer to her patient's bed. She purses her lips, then asks, "Waiting for what?"

Samantha turns to look at Shaw, gives her a humorless smile.

"To meet someone I've lost."

Shaw knows that this is a red flag, a sign that she should page a nurse and refer this patient to a therapist. To send her to the other wing of their hospital and have them prescribe her antidepressants and give her the help she needs.

That's the procedure, based on her oath as a doctor. Based on the code of conduct.

But she looks in Samantha's eyes, sees them pleading and longing, desperately searching for something in Shaw's own, and Shaw can't help but wonder what made her this way, to make her so irreparably broken.

Shaw puts her hand over her patient's, squeezes it lightly.

"Sometimes I feel like I am too," Shaw admits quietly, before quickly letting go of her hand.

She leaves the room, the sound of Samantha's heart monitor beeping in time with her own.

/

She means to shoot Root right in her coronary artery.

She _should._

After all, Root had bounded her to her chair, tried to torture her with an iron, tried to maim her—

had made her lose her only goddamn lead in finding who put the hit on Cole and hired a team of killers to end his life in cold blood.

So now?

Shaw really wants to shoot Root and put her down, watch her bleed on the floor and writhe in pain. To make her feel the unrelenting ache that's weighed heavily on her chest since the day Cole died.

But as she takes aim at Root, she notices the glassy look in Root's eyes**,** sees the anguish marring Root's features like a permanent fixture, the same kind of grief that floods through Shaw's bloodstreams and torrents through her veins every waking moment. She sees the helplessness, the betrayal in the quakes of her choked sobs—

She sees it all and for the first time since Cole's death, Shaw thinks that maybe. Maybe she's not so alone.

She shoots Root 5 millimeters to the right, missing her main artery.

/

"Harder, Shaw."

She chuckles lowly, before pushing three fingers into her, agonizingly slow. It's the third night this week she's been with this girl, brown-haired, brown eyed, tall and lithe. It's the third night she's been with her because she's a good lay, a screamer—not because she reminds her of something familiar in ways that Shaw doesn't understand.

The woman beneath her juts her hips upward, impatient.

"You want it?" Shaw husks teasingly, still not increasing her pace.

She nods eagerly, biting her lip. "I need it," she breathes, moans when Shaw hits a particular spot. "I need you."

Shaw freezes, pulls back, her fingers still in her.

The woman looks at her, confused as to why Shaw stopped, but all Shaw sees on her face is someone else's—a teasing smirk, a pair of warm dark eyes. A soft expression spread across her features.

"Shaw?"

She blinks for a moment, before leaning down and biting harshly on the girl's neck, feeling the vibrations of her groans under her teeth.

It's nothing, Shaw tries to convince herself, thrusting harder into this girl, leaving bruises all over her neck.

It's nothing.

/

Shaw has Axis 2 Personality Disorder. Its symptoms include impulsiveness, irritability, disregard for social norms, lack of remorse, and an inability to feel the spectrum of human emotions, if at all.

She knows this about herself. Knows it like the back of her hand.

So why is it that she finds herself staring into Root's eyes more and more often, like she's swimming in the deep end and wouldn't mind drowning in it?

Why is it when Root says her name—not Shaw, but _Sameen_— warmth rushes through her chest, soft and comforting and familiar, like she's finally found a home she might belong in?

And why is it that with every passing mission, Shaw feels an overwhelming fear hover over her shoulder, a maddening fear of death—not her own, but someone else's.

Shaw looks up at Root.

She shouldn't be able to feel any of these things.

But she _is._

/

"I love you," Shaw whispers on Root's neck, pushing two fingers into her.

She hears Root groan, feels her nod, but doesn't hear her say the words back.

Shaw expected this reaction, but still she leans back to look at Root's face. It's the same expression as Root had last time, and the time before that, and the time before that. She sees Root's eyes squinted shut, her eyebrows furrowed, biting the bottom of her lip so hard that it's drawing blood, looking like she's desperately fighting not to say the words in the back of her throat.

As though saying it will somehow cause her more pain than it already has.

As though loving Shaw _hurts._

Shaw leans down and kisses down Root's navel, leaving a trail of bites and nips along the way.

She wishes she knew how to make the pain stop.

Shaw pumps into Root with more vigor, faster, her other hand trailing down Root's stomach and to her clit, rubs it in tight circles.

Root moans, arching her hips towards Shaw's hand, begs her harder, and more, and don't ever stop.

Shaw complies, thrusting deeper into her, feels the muscles flutter around her fingers and she knows that Root's close.

She kisses Root's neck softly when she comes.

For now, this is the best she can do.

/

It's two forty-five in the morning. There's a full moon tonight. Root's heart is beating at approximately 85 beats per minute, though from the way Root's breath is evening on her collarbone, it's likely to decrease. And in exactly two hours and fifteen minutes, her alarm will go off. Root will groan at the sound it makes and push it off the table out of annoyance, partly because she hates waking up early, but mostly because she hates Shaw waking up early. Root will burrow closer to Shaw, hold her captive with an arm wrapped tightly around Shaw's waist. She'll relent and stay in bed for exactly twenty minutes, lingering in the feel of Root's body against her own, until Finch calls her at six. Root will tell her not to go, Shaw will reassure her she won't, but they both know that Shaw will anyway.

These are the things that Shaw knows. These are the things that she remembers.

But today, strangely, as she's laying here with Root, her head on Shaw's chest, all that floods her mind are the words Root has told her, of things that Shaw doesn't remember and all the lives Shaw's lived. Of all the times they've spent together, and of all the times that they never found each other.

These are the thoughts that run rampant through her mind, nagging, and Shaw can't get them out of her head.

Maddening.

Incessant.

Restless.

She has to know. She needs to know.

"How many lives has it been?"

Shaw feels the air suddenly shift, and she knows before Root says anything that she's broken a dam, the content of her thoughts flooding the room. Heavy and suffocating.

"Seventy five," Root whispers quietly.

Shaw's breath hitches, but Root doesn't seem to notice. She runs her fingers through Root's hair, tries to even her own breathing.

She needs to know this, Shaw reminds herself. She needs to remember.

After a moment, Shaw asks her another question:

"How many do you see me in?"

She feels Root's hand tighten around her waist, burrows herself deeper into Shaw. She wonders if Root hears the words Shaw's left unspoken, if Root knows what she's really trying to ask.

_(How many times have I walked away from you?)_

"Twenty two," Root eventually says.

Shaw feels her chest tighten, and Root shifts, leaning back to look at her, a worried expression on her face. The look only makes it harder for Shaw to breathe, because all Shaw can think about is how Root deserves so much more than this, how Root deserves so much better than her.

Shaw holds Root's face with both of her hands, soft and gentle.

"Do I ever love you in them?"

_(Do I ever stay?)_

Root gives her a broken smile, a half-hearted shrug.

"Sometimes."

Shaw pushes herself up and kisses her, soft and persistent. For all the times when she couldn't, for all the times that she didn't. Shaw kisses her and hopes that for once, she'll remember this moment, prays that, if nothing else, she'll commit this to memory, long after she's gone.

She looks into Root's brown eyes—fragile and broken—and finds herself asking without thinking,

"Do you ever love me in them?"

Root nods without hesitation, leans down and kisses Shaw, her lips quivering, like it might be the last time. Shaw melts against her lips, tastes the bitter tears on the tip of her tongue.

"Always," Root murmurs through her own tears. "Always."

Shaw wishes Root didn't, but knows that she's too selfish to mean it.

/

"Why didn't you kill her?"

Shaw doesn't turn around, washes Root's blood off her hands from carrying her to the psychiatric hospital. She knows without looking at Reese's face of what he's really asking. Why didn't she just kill Root, punish her for all she's done, for all the innocent lives she's taken, for all the pain she's caused—why did Shaw grant her a reprieve?

Shaw turns off the faucet, wipes her hands on a towel.

"Finch told us not to kill," she says simply.

"You never listen to Finch," he points out. She turns around, leans against the sink, her arms crossed. "So why didn't you kill her?"

It would've been so easy to deflect it, to deny it and say that it was a fluke, that she simply missed her mark and that she really did intend on killing Root. It would've been so easy to lie, to give him a simple explanation.

But she doesn't. What she finds herself say is the truth spilling from her lips, hears these words fall out of her mouth:

"Maybe what Root needs is a second chance."

Reese's expression shifts, a knowing look on his face. Shaw pushes herself off the sink, intending on leaving the room before Reese has a chance to say anything else to her, but he grabs her arm before she can.

"Maybe you both do," Reese tells her quietly, gentle and earnest.

He lets go of her arm and leaves, shutting the front door behind him.

Shaw stands in the bathroom alone, turns to face the mirror. She looks at it, sees her cheeks sunk, her skin pale, her eyes dull.

Reese's words swirl in her head, and she closes her eyes, her shoulders slumped.

Maybe they do, she thinks to herself.

Maybe they do.


End file.
